That was long ago.
And now, at the other end of life, one returns anew to Rosenegg on a sunny afternoon, purged of the mists of middle years and, delving into memories of that clear dawn and seeking to recapture its spirit, marvels at the feverish joy which greeted discoveries such as these degenerate little garnets, not a single one of which had the right color, nor made the faintest pretense at being the rhombic dodecahedron it should have been. How one changes!
This was always, alas, a bad country for “stones.”... Silver ore near Dalaas of questionable worth, and rock crystals in several quarries, and gypsum beyond St. Anton, and a poor kind of amethyst at the Hanging Stone; the fossils were likewise meager—corals in the limestone of Lorüns, univalves under certain rocks at Hohenems, those oysters in the ruddy Nagelfluh (Middle Miocene) at Bregenz; last, not least, the fucoids of the Flysch (Eocene) which you could find nearly everywhere, pretty to look at, but terribly fragile. That was all. There were legends, mere legends, of ammonites being seen in the local red marble; we never saw them![29] Ah, if our father had still been alive, he might have told us where to find this or that; his stone-collection was our delight, our despair. Not everybody had his luck, we often said, to stumble in the Scesa-torrent upon a huge writhing mammoth tusk that required two or three men to carry—how had he done it, and why couldn’t we do it too?[30]
Stones were dropped when birds and beasts began, and during that slaughter-epoch Rosenegg became once more famous for producing the first stoat that ever fell to my gun, and a falcon as well. There was a pair of them here, and once, resting on that green terrace with my mother, I saw the male bird dash off the ruin overhead, and swiftly took aim at him (I refused to be parted from my gun, even during family walks). Down he fluttered and fell, stone dead, at our feet. I recall that afternoon as if it were yesterday. My mother said nothing; she suffered more intensely than did the falcon, but had long since abandoned all hope of curing my murderous instincts. I remember, too, passing alone once through the woods below this tower and becoming aware of an unusual sound at my side. Who could have guessed its origin? It was a putrid fragment of a stag, so alive with worms as to make itself heard.
At the back of Rosenegg a little path descends through the wood; here, one morning before sunrise, I came face to face with a fox who was returning from some nocturnal visit to the poultry yards of Bürs; it was a question of who should step aside to let the other pass. The fox was not to be outdone in politeness; he vanished ere I had time to slip the gun from my shoulder. This is the path we followed yesterday, proceeding thence always eastwards at the foot of the Rhætikon mountains; at their roots, one might say, for they rise up straight from the level, as does a tree. Walking along, Mr. R. encountered a tiny creature that scared him considerably; indeed, he was transfixed with astonishment and stepped a pace or two backwards; he had never yet seen anything of the kind, either on land or in water.
“A crocodile?”
“Not quite; a Quadertatsch. Pick him up and make friends with him.”
“His hands are cold.”
Cold they are, like those of a Hindu; and he himself is blacker than any Hindu, or any nigger; black as the devil, with a luster as of patent-leather boots; black but comely. It looks as if his first shape had been remodeled by some thoughtful craftsman who added a row of decorative bosses along sides and back, and pinched his tail till it became slightly quadrangular in form; creating, with these few masterly touches, something heraldic and distinguished out of quite a commonplace original. A vast improvement! And his manners are in keeping. He nods his head sagely on making your acquaintance, and at once begins climbing up your arm with a comical precision of movement, a deliberate jauntiness, that reminds one of some retired maître de ballet whose limbs have grown a little creaky with age and rheumatism, but who is determined to show off his faded graces to the best advantage.
Perhaps I ought to explain that the Quadertatsch is what the Tyrolese call a Tattermandl. The last syllable of this word proves that they have also noticed certain human traits in his demeanor. The Tattermandl is a universal favorite among Alpine folk. In his home up there, you seldom see one of them alone; they are social beings, often to be found in companies of a dozen or more. And what was this one doing here, all by himself? Like several others I have met, he has been the victim of an accident; always the same accident! He was swept off his legs in the recent torrential rains and whirled two or three thousand feet down, into our tropical regions, along one of the gullies that seam these mountains. He will have a long walk home again; and all uphill.[31]